MIT: Newest students less diverse due to Supreme Court affirmative action decision

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said Wednesday that its incoming freshman class will be less diverse, pinning the shift on the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling last summer.  

Stu Schmill, dean of admissions at MIT, told MIT News that Black, Hispanic, and/or Native American and Pacific Islander students make up only 16 percent of the class of 2028.  

In recent years, Schmill said around 25 percent of the school’s incoming classes identified as one of those groups.  

“Last June, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities that receive federal funding may no longer consider race in undergraduate admissions decisions. As I explained in a blog post at the time, we expected that this would result in fewer students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups enrolling at MIT. That’s what has happened,” he said.  

While diversity has dropped, Schmill emphasized the incoming freshmen meet similar standards academically to previous years and are “no more or less prepared to excel in our curriculum than other recent classes that were more broadly diverse.” 

“I emphasize this essential fact because many people have told me over the years that MIT ought to care only about academic excellence, not diversity. But every student we admit, from any background, is already located at the far-right end of the distribution of academic excellence,” he said.  

He added MIT is working on more programs to attract diverse students, such as a targeted effort toward rural Americans and using QuestBridge, a national talent search group for high achieving low-income students.  

“Following the [affirmative action] decision, we are unable to use race in the same way, and that change is reflected in the outcome for the Class of 2028. Indeed, we did not solicit race or ethnicity information from applicants this year, so we don’t have data on the applicant pool. But I have no doubt that we left out many well-qualified, well-matched applicants from historically under-represented backgrounds who in the past we would have admitted — and who would have excelled,” Schmill said.  

Concerns of less diversity in schools has been a top issue after the affirmative action decision and amid ongoing GOP efforts against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies.